I first met @carlgnash after I joined a Discord server and he was promoting a writing contest he had just entered. I mentioned a little about this encounter in a previous post, so I'll just summarize by saying it involved writing the next chapter in a story about two characters who had some misadventures in a cave. @carlgnash's contribution to the story had the characters ending up on Mars, while mine took things in another direction...

Anyhow, I found out @carlgnash is not only one of @curie's best curators, but he has also founded several initiatives in order to promote original content on Steemit. I decided it would be fun to get to know him a little better, so let's put Carl in the spotlight for this week.

I asked Carl how he came across Steemit, and he tells it like this:

I have been aware of the cryptosphere for a while now and kind of kept tabs on things, but I did not invest in any cryptocurrencies until this summer. I saw the opportunity with the uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin in July and the way that was dragging prices down to make some small investments in various cryptos at what I felt were bargain prices (and which did indeed prove to be great prices! I bought IOTA at $.18 for example!). While I was doing research on different alt coins I heard about Steem / Steemit and decided to check out the website. I loved that I could earn this crypto just through doing the kind of posting I did anyway on Facebook and my D&D blogs and I got hooked pretty much instantly when @stellabelle gave a comment of mine a $5 upvote :)

There are several things in this response that are intriguing, especially with the astronomical rise of both IOTA and Bitcoin since July. Hopefully Carl held onto those initial stakes.

It's also great to see that it was something as simple as moving what he already posted about on other social media over to Steemit. Many of us have used this opportunity to earn rewards when we post, and I believe that will continue to be a driving factor for new Steemian recruitment.

Carl has been on Steemit since July of this year. He's made it to reputation 57 and has an average post payout of $4.31 after 146 blogs. Not bad at all. So let's take a look at what Carl enjoys blogging about. He had this to say when I asked him what his favorite blogging topics were:

Oh geez. I am a man of many interests. I would have to say I enjoy posting my original art and music the most. I somehow seem to embark on ambitious tutorial posts more often than I intend to, and while they are a TON of work I do really like seeing the impressive edifices I have created when I finish up a post like my "Curate like a boss..." series or my Deep Dream Generator tutorial. These are posts that are pushing 5000 words with a ton of images as well. There is something satisfying at just reading through such a long and detailed post and knowing... I did that.

Indeed, if you scroll through his blog, you'll find many entries into the Steemit Open Mic competition, some photoshopped images of his family, caption contests,, and the aforementioned Curate like a boss series..

I'd encourage you to scroll down his blog and check out some of his earlier work. You never know what you might find there. He may even be hosting some sort of contest on his blog right now. You never know!

In addition to being a great post author, @carlgnash is an even better curator. Recently selected to be a community representative for @curie, Carl is consistently one of the top-ranked curie curators each week. This status has resulted in many other interviews by other Steemians, but I did want to ask Carl about what he looks for when curating posts. His approach was interesting, for sure:

I look for posters that let their weirdness and idiosyncracies shine through - posters who are not worried about appearing "polished" and "professional" but instead are too busy letting joyously exuberant posting rip to give a damn about what a good post is "supposed" to look like. Not that there is anything wrong with polished and professional when the post is also creative and original, but a polished and professional turd is still a turd. I tend to stay away from posts and posters who work hard to emulate generic professional bloggers.

An interesting outlook on Steemit and original content. For those of you aspiring to grow your accounts, remember that original ideas are always best. Carl isn't the only curator who looks for things like this. Blogging about a topic that's meaningful to yourself, no matter how strange, may be rewarding. Give it a shot!

Life, Offline

While many of us know Carl on Steemit, I wanted to find out what his life is like when he's not curating posts or hanging out on Discord. Here's what he had to say:

I am a stay at home dad of two amazing Things aged 3 and 1. I play guitar and sing for them all the time and they love it and already join in on the musical fun. My wife is awesome and talented and you can check her out here on Steem blockhain as well (@dillemma, although she has not been active recently - she was recently promoted to manager of a 500+ station phone center so she is busy busy). I whistle more than I do any other conscious activity. I am the cook of the family and a damn good one at that.

Disc golf is a passion and I am excited to be hitting new personal bests for distance as I am working on my 360° backhand drive - I recently threw 529' on flat ground which added quite a bit to my previous best toss. I draw with pen and ink on paper in a cross-hatch style and I "paint" in PhotoShop. I do freelance historical research as a side gig and make great money doing it. I spent the last 5 years working in market research and data analysis is another thing I am very interested in and actively pursuing through SteemSQL to gain a better understanding of the Steem blockchain.

It's always great to hear about what Steemians' lives are like. I imagine seeing Carl play the guitar and sing for his children would be very heartwarming. If you look closely on his blog, you might catch a glimpse of his kids every once in a while. But we surely haven't seen much about his disc golf escapades. I'm certainly interested in seeing some blogs about that in the future.

Carl is a PC user, and when I asked him about TV shows and movies, he had this to say:

I don't watch TV and The Big Lebowski popped into my head when I read the question, so I guess the Dude abides.

I suppose we'll leave it at that.

Thoughts on Steemit

When asked to describe Steemit in one word or phrase, Carl responded:

Steep learning curve but well worth the effort.

I think this is an accurate description. As any new user has found out, there's so much to learn when first embarking on your Steemit journey. However, if you stick around long enough, you'll find all sorts of things that will make you want to stay.

I asked Carl if he could change something about Steemit, what would it be? His response is very thoughtful:

I wish people would stop using paid upvote services and I wish the major investors would wise up to the fact that seizing short term profit by leasing their SP to vote selling services is hurting their investment's long term chances. Paid upvotes are the single biggest problem facing Steem and serve to increase the already staggering wealth inequality here while simultaneously creating the really ugly look that you have to pay to earn here. Please don't use paid upvote services even if you can realize a short term gain for yourself, would be my advice to people. Think about the bigger picture. Check out @liberosist's very well written summary of the major issues surrounding vote buying. Watch my own video interview with @doctorcrypto. Gather as much information as you can so you can make an informed decision and I hope that by so doing you come to the realization that pay-for-votes stinks to high heaven.

Carl has spoken out against vote buying often, so I encourage you to check out the resources he mentioned:

• @liberosist's A review of vote buying
• @doctorcrypto's Interview with top Curie Curator @carlgnash

Vote-buying has been a hot-button issue across Steemit for a while, and I don't anticipate it will change any time soon. It's important to know what you're buying and the implications and ramifications of such actions, so it's good that Carl took a moment to reflect on this. Consider the impact of these services on all Steemians and the community as a whole.

On that note, it's always interesting to hear about what communities each of these Steemians are involved in. Here's what Carl said:

@curie and MSP, although I have not been very active on PAL (MSP Discord Chat) since I became a moderator for the #curie channel on steemit.chat. I am a top curator for @curie and have been named a "@curie community representative". I love and miss all my MSP peeps though and I hope they read this so I can say - YOU ALL ROCK YOU BEAUTIFUL MSP PEOPLE!!!

I would encourage you to check out @curie's efforts across the Steemit blockchain, and join the incredible Minnow Support Project (MSP). There are many great users who are willing to help Steemians new and old accomplish their goals.

Carl wanted to stress the importance of witness voting. When I asked him if he had a witness to recommend, he responded,

@curie is a community witness with a very experienced developer (@locikll) running the technical side of things; all decisions RE hardforks and other changes are made collectively through a vote by the @curie project members to include the (hundreds) of curators and reviewers. @curie is not political and does not cast votes for other witnesses, but we (speaking as one of the members with a voice in a truly democratic and open organization) always act in what we see as the best interests of the platform at large.

@sircork is a gentleman and scholar and a witness who is passionate about helping others - check out his @youarehope blockchain charity as well.

Witness voting is a vital part of our experience on Steemit. If you haven't found candidates for all of your witness votes, definitely check out @curie.

If you've read the past posts in this series, you'll know that one of the common themes among all the users I've interviewed is community. In my interactions with Carl, he has always prioritized interactions with others on Steemit. This interview was no different. Carl had these words to offer on the subject:

Steemit (or whatever 3rd party site is your Steem flavor) is not a blogging platform. You can blog here, but thinking about Steemit as a blogging platform is a mistake. It is a social network. Success here comes not just from posting good original content but also (and probably more importantly to the actual rewards received) from being an active and engaged member of the community. You hear people calling for more original content creators all the time. We can't all be regular posters of awesome original content, but we can all be active and engaged readers and commenters supporting other posters.

Particularly for newer users who have yet to build up a network here, I would also recommend engaging with people off blockchain on the associated chat servers (i.e. Discord and Steemit.chat), finding like minded communities and just in general having real human interactions with people. That is the road to success. Just logging on to write a post and posting it and logging off is not going to lead anywhere.

All the time I have people ask me why they are not having the success they feel they deserve, and I look at their profile and see they have been here for months and have a few dozen posts (including comments) total in that time. Your comment count should be many multiples of your post count, and every comment you leave should be an honest, thoughtful, non-spammy comment. That is the way to grow your network - success will come to those who quit worrying about their own success and start putting time and effort into boosting up their friends by reading and commenting and engaging.

This is possibly one of the greatest statements I've ever heard about interactions and engagement on this platform. I will probably refer new users back to these words in the future for advice on community, engagement, success, and rewards.

I could probably spend the rest of this post series dissecting the aspects of the above response, but I want to highlight some of Carl's specific efforts to encourage the habits he has mentioned.

The Originality Curators: @humanbot and @r-bot

I briefly mentioned these efforts in a recent post about curation efforts that I follow, and I wanted to take some more time to highlight what Carl's curation accounts are doing to promote originality.

Carl manually votes with both accounts, and spends their voting power on posts that he deems truly original. This goes beyond just "not plagiarized" and looks for truly creative content that adds to the platform.

I asked Carl about his motivations for the project, and he first talked about the humanbot project:

@humanbot is an idea I have had in the back of my head since I joined Steem - an account that did some of the bot-type things you see accounts like @originalworks doing, but in a human-powered fashion. The initial post series I conceived hasn't even actually launched with @humanbot, which was to be the "Steemit Wayback Machine" where I planned on spotlighting some awesome older posts that didn't get the payout they deserved and I would split 100% of the post payout up between the featured post authors. That is still in the works! What actually got launched first was the Human Certified Original Works initiative, and that has really resonated with people.

One of the main ways he seeks out such content is through his "badges of originality." These badges are given to various other curators who help Carl seek out posts, and each user may leave his or her badge in the comments of a post. If you receive one of these badges, congratulations! Your content has been declared a "Human Certified Original Work!"

I like the idea of the "Wayback Machine," so hopefully Carl will return to this idea sometime in the near future.

When asked about the motivation for @r-bot, here's what Carl had to say:

@r-bot sprang up because I was spending less and less time on PAL Discord chat (MSP chat) as I got more into curation for @curie. I swung by PAL one night after registering the @humanbot name and mentioned I had just done so - my friend @rougebot said, "What about @r-bot?" and I loved the name. It was available and I registered it on the spot and asked @rougebot if he would like to co-post with me on that account. @rougebot said the name "r-bot" could mean "OUR-bot" and I loved that. That sparked an idea - I approached some curator friends of mine and shared the posting key with them so they could use r-bot to upvote good, undervalued content. Over time we have kind of solidified the mission statement to also include supporting deserving MSP members (@rougebot heads up that effort - he is a Jr. Mod on PAL) and supporting good commenting/commenters.

I fully support both of these initiatives, as I believe truly original content should be valued above all else on the platform. As I have discussed previously, my account currently trails the efforts of these two bots, providing votes to all of the content that they vote on.

I hope for the continued success of @carlgnash's projects across Steemit, and I'm sure that he would be interested in hearing from you if you would like to help find human-certified original works across Steemit. I hope you'll also use the knowledge Carl has shared with us about his criteria for curation. Perhaps you'll land a @curie vote in the future just by following his tips!

Final Thoughts

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As always, I enjoy leaving you, the readers, with some final thoughts. I asked Carl for his final thoughts, and he responded:

Spread love in the world starting with the people around you. That is the easiest way to make the world (and the blockchain) a better place. Be love and spread love and breath love and give love and receive love.

Much love - Carl

Let's join Carl in spreading the love across Steemit through our votes, comments, resteems, and interactions with various communities.

Check out the other Volumes of The Steemian Spotlight!

• Volume 1: Inertia
• Volume 2: HopeHuggs
• Volume 3: topkpop
• Volume 4: ShadowsPub
• Volume 5: carlgnash